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Monday, 19 June 2017

Another sick headline from the Daily Mail hate preachers

The Daily Mail reaction to the Finsbury Park attack was as despicable as anyone with any sense has come to expect from this extreme-right hate comic. The only surprise is that they didn't immediately try to set the narrative that the attacker was a poor mentally unstable loner who is deserving of sympathy (as they did with the Jo Cox murderer and Britain First fan Thomas Mair).White van driverThe first thing to notice is that they used the bizarre euphemism "white van driver" to describe the suspected terrorist. Did they describe the Westminster attacker as a "Hyundai Tuscon driver"? Did they describe the leader of the London Bridge attack as a "white van driver"?Of course they didn't. They described them as terrorists because that's what they were. This Daily Mail reticence about describing white extreme-right terrorists as terrorists exposes a clear double standard. I'll leave it up to you to consider why such an obvious double standard exists in the Daily Mail newsroom.Victim blamingAbu Hamza did used to preach hatred at Finsbury Park mosque but he was cleared out in 2005 and was deported from the UK in October 2012.Finsbury Park Mosque is now operated by new owners and has consistently worked to combat Islamist fanaticism and to build bridges with the non-Muslim community. In 2014 they were given an community award for stamping out extremism and becoming an asset to their local community (an award that somehow went unreported in the Daily Mail).The fact that extreme-right news outlets still consistently refer to Abu Hamza and hate preaching whenever they mention Finsbury Park Mosque actually seems like a likely causal factor in the attack. Instead of informing the public that the Finsbury Park Mosque has changed dramatically under the new ownership, they continue to write about it as if it's a hotbed of Jihadism, turning it into a focus of hate for the extreme-right fanatics the Daily Mail and their ilk radicalise with their own hate-preaching rhetoric.Continuing to associate the mosque with Islamist hate preaching even after the extreme-right terrorist attack comes sickeningly close to blaming the innocent victims of the attack for having been targets.Clean shaven white menWe all know the routine now. After every single Salafi Islamist attack in the west the extreme-right fanatics come crawling out of the woodwork to demand that Muslims in general condemn the attack.

It doesn't matter how often we point to Muslim leaders condemning the attack, Muslim protest marches against the attack, Muslim emergency services workers saving the lives of the victims, Muslim taxi drivers giving people free rides home, or the fundamentally important fact that Salafi terrorists kill far more other Muslims than westerners, they still bounce back with the same anti-Muslim attack point again and again after every incident.If all Muslims (even those who helped out in the aftermath or whose own branch of Islam is under attack by the Salafi Islamist terrorists) have an obligation to visibly condemn every attack, then obviously all clean-shaven white men (including those who helped out in the aftermath, or who fundamentally oppose with extreme-right fanaticism) have an obligation to visibly condemn this act of terrorism by one of their brethren, right?Or perhaps we could admit that lumping all clean shaven white men into a simplistic category is as idiotic as lumping all followers of the diverse Islamic faiths (Sunni/Shia, Sufi, Ahemadiyya, Ibadi ...) into one simplistic category?Hate preachersI've already pointed out how one of the incantations of the extreme-right hate preachers (mentioning Abu Hamza and every time Finsbury Park Mosque is mentioned without noting that his extremism was driven out years ago) could have been a causal factor in driving the extreme-right terrorist to attack that particular location.The extreme-right hate preachers are just as divisive and dangerous as the Salafi Islamist hate preachers because they're two sides of the same coin. They both push hatred and division, and they both have the long-term objective of triggering a "clash of civilisations" war between Islam and the West.Not only do the extreme-right and the Salafi Islamists use the same divisive methods, they work towards the same sick objective too.

The Islamist terrorists and hate preachers are despised by the huge majority of Muslims, and the extreme-right hate preachers are (thankfully) still only a very noisy minority in most developed western nations.

The problem of course is that even though the extreme-right promote the exact same kind of hatred and division as the Islamist extremists, and crave the same violent ideological conflict, they're treated much less seriously by western society than the Islamist hate preachers.

The people spreading extreme-right ideology, divisive rhetoric, Nazi symbolism, outright lies, and their violent lynch mob mentality are too often just treated like rebellious contrarians rather than the depraved and dangerous hate preachers they are.

Islamist hate preachers like Abu Hamza are driven out of mosques, reported to the authorities and deported from the UK, but extreme-right hate preachers amongst us are rewarded with Daily Mail columns, radio talkshows and gigantic book deals.

It's about time British society got as serious about combating extreme-right hate preachers as we are about combating Islamist hate preachers. These people are not lovable rogues, they're exactly the same kind of divisive terrorist-inspiring hatemongers as the Islamist hate preachers.

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